#postdildo is one part Instagram hashtag, one part graffiti tag, one part reading group, one part dialogue, one part show and tell, one part fantasy, one part callout, one part poetry reading series, one part orgy, one part poetry book, one part sucker punch, one part living deliciously, one part trigger warning, one part education ...

It is already too much.

Commencing Tuesday, June 26th, and with the gracious support of ARTS ASSEMBLY and the Canada Council for the Arts, #postdildo will take form as one of the aforementioned parts: a reading group. Readings serve to help us navigate difficult discussions on sexual violence, rape culture, desire, and a/sexual fantasies. #postdildo wants to allow for all the room in sexual fantasies especially when applying criticism from a feminist marxist lens, moving beyond false consciousness, where our fantasies are not our own, solely dictated by capitalist white supremacist patriarchy.

What makes a dildo special is that it is a ready-made cock, prosthetic, available and detached from any supposed owner who may cause damage. As the saying goes: dildos don’t kill people, people kill people. #postdildo simultaneously views the dildo as a tool of liberation and oppression, exploring the dildo as a means to both support sexual autonomy and alienation. To that end #postdildo, with its cacophony of non-raping cocks, speculatively tells us more about the design of our present moment than any possible future.

Last October 2017, the viral hashtag “me too” proliferated screens and lives, aggressively reminding the world that sexual harassment and rape continues (it never stopped) to saturate lives. In the advent of these conversations, #postdildo took on a new significance: How to fuck without causing harm? How shall you fuck without causing harm? In the introduction to the late Canadian poet Pat Lowther’s Time Capsule, Beth Lowther reflects on her father’s brutal murder of her mother, writing, “the equation of women with carnal nature has caused us untold suffering.” To this end, #postdildo, yearns for carnal natures, just as it yearns for more than retribution, more than reconciliation. #postdildo is dedicated to those who have died because of their sexual preferences and expressions, their class and race and gender and sexuality. It is dedicated to all the poems and ideas lost.

If there are such awkward leaps in #postdildo, they are, like the shockingly unshocking explorations detailed in sexual fantasies, the product of yearning for relations with others that are just as disgusting as they are beautiful and, at the very least, consensual.

#postdildo #readinggroup is situated on the stolen Indigenous lands of the Musqueam, Skwxwú7mesh Úxwumixw, Stó:lō, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples.

The reading group consists of five sessions, which includes a two week hiatus between session three and four. 7pm-10pm. We’ll congregate at ACCESS Gallery (222 E Georgia St.) as guests of ARTS ASSEMBLY. If anything changes regarding time/location, updates will be promptly communicated to all.

There is no gender restriction. We will, however, collectively discuss protocol and develop a contract/manifesto to determine how we all might produce this space together.

If you would like to participate and/or have access to the reading folder contact Danielle LaFrance dmmlaf@gmail.com. Participating long distance is encouraged and anticipated. Written responses are also encouraged and anticipated.

No response means no.

session one, OR I RECOGNIZE MY BODY AND ALL LIVING BODIES AS SPEAKING BODIES AND I FULLY CONSENT TO NEVER ENTER INTO A NATURALIZED SEXUAL RELATIONSHIP WITH THEM, AND TO NEVER HAVE SEX WITH THEM OUTSIDE OF TEMPORAL AND CONSENSUAL CONTRA-SEXUAL CONTRACTS